Case Number 02992: Small Claims Court

THE SHAFT

The Charge

Your next stop...is hell!

The Case

In the 102-story Millennium Building in New York City (?), a group of
overripe expectant mothers get trapped in a sauna-like population shifter and,
once released, drop their dependents in one water-breaking barrage of babies.
The Meteor Elevator Company comes out to investigate and finds everything ship
shaft shape. A blind man bluffs his way into an empty lift tunnel and drags his
seeing-eye dog to a dumb death as well. Another call to Meteor -- another clean
bill of mechanical health. The next night a security guard has his head removed
from his torso by the rogue people mover. Again, Meteor comes out -- again
everything is sweaters and fruit rollups. This makes the building manager
substantially less gay and his security staff more than a little concerned about
Meteor's quality control. A feisty headline hungry journalist with tabloids in
her eyes tries to discover the truth behind the rash of up and down disasters.
But only after a skate rat is given the supersonic suicide shuttle service to
the top floor (and back down again) and some women and children perish when
their tourist trolley develops a severe case of floor aperturing do we get any
kind of pro-active, pro-escalator rhetoric (especially since someone says the
"T" word -- terrorism). Together with a misplaced ex-Marine Meteor
mechanic who specializes in the "Doors Close" button on the light
panel, our plucky Pulitzer pursuer discovers that a crazy German scientist has
fitted the building's human shuttle system with a bio-chemical brain that may
have developed a devious derangement of its own. Will they stop the
super-intelligent/evil elevator from seeking its non-specific revenge on
mankind, or will everyone simply experience The Shaft?

Some movies have their cinematic tongue planted firmly against the inside of
their quirky cheek. Other films go one better, cramming that fleshy flap of fun
so hard against the surrounds of their mirth mouth that you can see it clearly
from the other side, waggling to get out. And then there is The Shaft, a
movie so over the top and filled with sassy and brassy volley balls that it
pushes through the epidermal envelope and wiggles its bad taste buds in churlish
glee. Here is a movie that starts off with a rather randy sexual double
entendre/consumer products warning label title (possible ad copy: "you too
could get...THE SHAFT!") and then introduces its main villain as a
killer elevator. That's right, Master Otis and his vertical convenience are the
new Jason in town, and it's not long before heads roll, bodies bisect, and
pregnant ladies drop their puppies in mid tower free fall. In the long history
of fright flicks, there have been a few downright weird entities of evil -- the
possessed refrigerator of The Refrigerator, the unsane cotton picker from
The Mangler -- but none quite as squirrelly as Satan's express freight
winch in The Shaft. Director Dick Maas, updating the plot and cribbing
some actual dialogue from his own previous killer convenience film, 1983's Dutch
De Lift, understands that there is more than a little suspension of
disbelief required to accept a 8' x 10' room that moves up and down inside the
core of a skyscraper as suspenseful or menacing. So he does something that other
low-grade fright filmmakers should consider. He creates his own universe and
logic and follows through on both with complete abandon. No power source for it
to run on? Who cares, errant elevator is on the prowl. Wire and cables cut,
keeping it from moving in a normal fashion? Too bad, wicked elevator's bloodlust
is insatiable. Maas constantly circumvents the rules of the modern world to make
his mechanical menace function as a viable villain. The Shaft is like
science fiction mixed with shop class. It involves engineering of a near
extraterrestrial variety.

Another bit of warped rationale comes in the casting. In order to make the
audience believe this hacked up world of hooey, even if it's all in the fever
dreams of a crackheaded architect, Maas loads the film with recognizable, if not
instantly name bell ringing actors. He has an all-star cast of basically B-movie
on the edge of respectability Hollywood stalwarts. Check out this title card:
James Marshall (Twin Peaks), Naomi Watts (The Ring, Mulholland
Dr.), Eric Thal (The Puppet Masters), Michael Ironside (Total
Recall, Starship Troopers), Edward Herrmann (The Lost Boys),
Ron Perlman (Blade II, Hellboy), and Dan Hedaya (Blood
Simple, Joe vs. the Volcano). It's a smorgasbord of underappreciated,
flying just under the radar Tinseltown talents. Each gets a chance to chew the
scenery and individually they bite and masticate in fierce, fun fashion.
Especially entertaining is Herrmann's near fainting spells at the mention of
closing the elevators for...a couple of hours!!! ARGH!!, and Ironside's
lament for his bio-techno living lift. Even when the dialogue coming out of
their mouth sounds like dramatic experts from Alexander Yalt's translation of
the original Dutch screenplay, these professional thespians sell it all with a
serious sincerity that borders on the deranged. From venting arguments about
full vertical duct inspections to obvious Nazi daycare jokes that threaten to
cross the boundary lines of political correctness, The Shaft is a horror
hoot that probably thinks it's a smart, scary observation on modern technology
gone awry. But when it's housed in the guise of a devilish dumbwaiter, one with
a swollen itchy brain in the middle of its UA approved electrical panel,
something is obviously amiss in the film schools of Denmark.

It's too bad then that Artisan wouldn't allow Maas a chance at commenting on
his film for posterity and its release on DVD. Since he made De Lift over
14 years before, it would be interesting to hear how he decided to change the
story to fit the new millennium and those scenes he determined to keep from the
original. Even better would have been for Fartsy Artsy to step up and offer
De Lift as an extra -- either on a bonus disc or single layer branching.
The compare and contrast aspects boggle the mind. As it is, the Edict enemies
serve up this decidedly deranged film with a bad full screen transfer
just rife with pain and scam non-OAR issues. The image is crisp and detailed.
The framing and composition problems are abundant. One should not have to watch
an optical switch from a shot of the actor to some of the action during a
crucial thrill sequence. The audience should not be wondering whom characters
are addressing. While it's not some manner of masterful aesthetic wonderwork,
brutalizing the transfer in this fashion shows that, when it comes to releasing
product on DVD, Arti-san only cares if the disc plays and that's about it, which
is really too bad for a film like The Shaft. While it is not great horror
by any far stretch of the human spirit, it is a daffy bit of cinematic daring
doodie that delivers many more chuckles of disbelief than terror induced gasps.
For all its faux fright trappings, it's really just a cautionary tale about
failing to utilize the stairs when traversing from floor to floor. Next
stop...ladies lingerie, big and tall footwear, orthopedic jock straps...and
murder!